Environment variables?

[Jeff Blank]

just a quick and simple question...

I have looked around through a number of howto's  (everyone that seems 
relevant to me ;) and also a number of books on linux from the library and 
can find very little to no info on them.  I am trying to set the http_proxy 
variable at startup so that I can use the gui apt programs in debian to 
upgrade and work with packages.  Any help would be ghreatly appreciated.

Jeff Blank